THE VALLEY OF THE MOON JACK LONDON BOOK 2 CHAPTER 18 ppt

THE VALLEY OF THE MOON
JACK LONDON
BOOK 2
CHAPTER 18

It was early evening when they got off the car at Seventh and Pine on their way
home from Bell's Theater. Billy and Saxon did their little marketing together, then
separated at the corner, Saxon to go on to the house and prepare supper, Billy to go
and see the boys the teamsters who had fought on in the strike during his month of
retirement.
"Take care of yourself, Billy," she called, as he started off.
"Sure," he answered, turning his face to her over his shoulder.
Her heart leaped at the smile. It was his old, unsullied love-smile which she wanted
always to see on his face for which, armed with her own wisdom and the wisdom
of Mercedes, she would wage the utmost woman's war to possess. A thought of
this flashed brightly through her brain, and it was with a proud little smile that she
remembered all her pretty equipment stored at home in the bureau and the chest of
drawers.
Three-quarters of an hour later, supper ready, all but the putting on of the lamb
chops at the sound of his step, Saxon waited. She heard the gate click, but instead
of his step she heard a curious and confused scraping of many steps. She flew to
open the door. Billy stood there, but a different Billy from the one she had parted
from so short a time before. A small boy, beside him, held his hat. His face had
been fresh-washed, or, rather, drenched, for his shirt and shoulders were wet. His
pale hair lay damp and plastered against his forehead, and was darkened by oozing
blood. Both arms hung limply by his side. But his face was composed, and he even
grinned.
"It's all right," he reassured Saxon. "The joke's on me. Somewhat damaged but still
in the ring." He stepped gingerly across the threshold. " Come on in, you fellows.
We're all mutts together."
He was followed in by the boy with his hat, by Bud Strothers and another teamster

she knew, and by two strangers. The latter were big, hard-featured, sheepish-faced
men, who stared at Saxon as if afraid of her.
"It's all right, Saxon," Billy began, but was interrupted by Bud.
"First thing is to get him on the bed an' cut his clothes off him. Both arms is broke,
and here are the ginks that done it."
He indicated the two strangers, who shuffled their feet with embarrassment and
looked more sheepish than ever.
Billy sat down on the bed, and while Saxon held the lamp, Bud and the strangers
proceeded to cut coat, shirt, and undershirt from him.
"He wouldn't go to the receivin' hospital," Bud said to Saxon.
"Not on your life," Billy concurred. "I had 'em send for Doc Hentley. He'll be here
any minute. Them two arms is all I got. They've done pretty well by me, an' I gotta
do the same by them -No medical students a-learnin' their trade on me."
"But how did it happens" Saxon demanded, looking from Billy to the two
strangers, puzzled by the amity that so evidently existed among them all.
"Oh, they're all right," Billy dashed in. "They done it through mistake. They're
Frisco teamsters, an' they come over to help us a lot of 'em."
The two teamsters seemed to cheer up at this, and nodded their heads.
"Yes, missus," one of them rumbled hoarsely. "It's all a mistake, an' well, the
joke's on us."
"The drinks, anyway," Billy grinned.
Not only was Saxon not excited, but she was scarcely perturbed. What had
happened was only to be expected.
It was in line with all that Oakland had already done to her and hers, and, besides,
Billy was not dangerously hurt. Broken arms and a sore head would heal. She
brought chairs and seated everybody.
"Now tell me what happened," she begged. "I'm all at sea, what of you two burleys
breaking my husband's arms, then seeing him home and holding a love-fest with
him."
"An' you got a right," Bud Strothers assured her. "You see, it happened this way "

"You shut up, Bud," Billy broke it. "You didn't see anything of it."
Saxon looked to the San Francisco teamsters.
"We'd come over to lend a hand, seein' as the Oakland boys was gettin' some the
short end of it," one spoke up, "an' we've sure learned some scabs there's better
trades than drivin' team. Well, me an' Jackson here was nosin' around to see what
we can see, when your husband comes moseyin' along. When he "
"Hold on," Jackson interrupted. "get it straight as you go along. We reckon we
know the boys by sight. But your husband we ain't never seen around, him bein'. "
"As you might say, put away for a while," the first teamster took up the tale. "So,
when we sees what we thinks is a scab dodgin' away from us an' takin' the shortcut
through the alley "
"The alley back of Campbell's grocery," Billy elucidated.
"Yep, back of the grocery," the first teamster went on; "why, we're sure he's one of
them squarehead scabs, hired through Murray an' Ready, makin' a sneak to get into
the stables over the back fences."
"We caught one there, Billy an' me," Bud interpolated.
"So we don't waste any time," Jackson said, addressing himself to Saxon. "We've
done it before, an' we know how to do 'em up brown an' tie 'em with baby ribbon.
So we catch your husband right in the alley."
"I was lookin' for Bud," said Billy. "The boys told me I'd find him somewhere
around the other end of the alley. An' the first thing I know, Jackson, here, asks me
for a match."
"An' right there's where I get in my fine work," resumed the first teamster.
"What?" asked Saxon.
"That." The man pointed to the wound in Billy's scalp. "I laid 'm out. He went
down like a steer, an' got up on his knees dippy, a-gabblin' about somebody
standin' on their foot. He didn't know where he was at, you see, clean groggy. An'
then we done it."
The man paused, the tale told.
"Broke both his arms with the crowbar," Bud supplemented.

"That's when I come to myself, when the bones broke," Billy corroborated. "An'
there was the two of 'em givin' me the ha-ha. 'That'll last you some time,' Jackson
was sayin'. An' Anson says, 'I'd like to see you drive horses with them arms.' An'
then Jackson says, 'let's give 'm something for luck.' An' with that he fetched me a
wallop on the jaw "
"No," corrected Anson. "That wallop was mine."
"Well, it sent me into dreamland over again," Billy sighed. "An' when I come to,
here was Bud an' Anson an' Jackson dousin' me at a water trough. An' then we
dodged a reporter an' all come home together."
Bud Strothers held up his fist and indicated freshly abraded skin.
"The reporter-guy just insisted on samplin' it," he said. Then, to Billy: "That's why
I cut around Ninth an' caught up with you down on Sixth."
A few minutes later Doctor Hentley arrived, and drove the men from the rooms.
They waited till he had finished, to assure themselves of Billy's well being, and
then departed. In the kitchen Doctor Hentley washed his hands and gave Saxon
final instructions. As he dried himself he sniffed the air and looked toward the
stove where a pot was simmering.
"Clams," he said. "Where did you buy them?"
"I didn't buy them," replied Saxon. "I dug them myself."
"Not in the marsh?" he asked with quickened interest.
"Yes."
"Throw them away. Throw them out. They're death and corruption. Typhoid I've
got three cases now, all traced to the clams and the marsh."
When he had gone, Saxon obeyed. Still another mark against Oakland, she
reflected Oakland, the man-trap, that poisoned those it could not starve.
"If it wouldn't drive a man to drink," Billy groaned, when Saxon returned to him.
"Did you ever dream such luck? Look at all my fights in the ring, an' never a
broken bone, an' here, snap, snap, just like that, two arms smashed."
"Oh, it might be worse," Saxon smiled cheerfully.
"I'd like to know how." It might have been your neck."

"An' a good job. I tell you, Saxon, you gotta show me anything worse."
"I can," she said confidently.
"Well?"
"Well, wouldn't it be worse if you intended staying on in Oakland where it might
happen again?"
"I can see myself becomin' a farmer an' plowin' with a pair of pipe-stems like
these," he persisted.
"Doctor Hentley says they'll be stronger at the break than ever before. And you
know yourself that's true of clean-broken bones. Now you close your eyes and go
to sleep. You're all done up, and you need to keep your brain quiet and stop
thinking."
He closed his eyes obediently. She slipped a cool hand under the nape of his neck
and let it rest.
"That feels good," he murmured. "You're so cool, Saxon. Your hand, and you, all
of you. Bein' with you is like comin' out into the cool night after dancin' in a hot
room."
After several minutes of quiet, he began to giggle.
"What is it?" she asked.
"Oh, nothin'. I was just thinkin' thinking of them mutts doin' me up me, that's
done up more scabs than I can remember."
Next morning Billy awoke with his blues dissipated. From the kitchen Saxon heard
him painfully wrestling strange vocal acrobatics.
"I got a new song you never heard," he told her when she came in with a cup of
coffee. "I only remember the chorus though. It's the old man talkin' to some hobo
of a hired man that wants to marry his daughter. Mamie, that Billy Murphy used to
run with before he got married, used to sing it. It's a kind of a sobby song. It used
to always give Mamie the weeps. Here's the way the chorus goes an' remember,
it's the old man spielin'."
And with great solemnity and excruciating Batting, Billy sang:
"O treat my daughter kind-i-ly;

An' say you'll do no harm,
An' when I die I'll will to you
My little house an' farm
My horse, my plow, my sheep, my cow,
An' all them little chickens in the ga-a-rden.
"It's them little chickens in the garden that gets me," he explained. "That's how I
remembered it from the chickens in the movin' pictures yesterday. An' some day
we'll have little chickens in the garden, won't we, old girl?"
"And a daughter, too," Saxon amplified.
"An' I'll be the old geezer sayin' them same words to the hired man," Billy carried
the fancy along. "It don't take long to raise a daughter if you ain't in a hurry."
Saxon took her long-neglected ukulele from its case and strummed it into tune.
"And I've a song you never heard, Billy. Tom's always singing it. He's crazy about
taking up government land and going farming, only Sarah won't think of it. He
sings it something like this:
"We'll have a little farm,
A pig, a horse, a cow,
And you will drive the wagon,
And I will drive the plow."
"Only in this case I guess it's me that'll do the plowin'," Billy approved. "Say,
Saxon, sing 'Harvest Days.' That's a farmer's song, too."
After that she feared the coffee was growing cold and compelled Billy to take it. In
the helplessness of two broken arms, he had to be fed like a baby, and as she fed
him they talked.
"I'll tell you one thing," Billy said, between mouthfuls. "Once we get settled down
in the country you'll have that horse you've been wishin' for all your life. An' it'll be
all your own, to ride, drive, sell, or do anything you want with."
And, again, he ruminated: "One thing that'll come handy in the country is that I
know horses; that's a big start. I can always get a job at that if it ain't at union
wages. An' the other things about farmin' I can learn fast enough Say, d'ye

remember that day you first told me about wantin' a horse to ride all your life?"
Saxon remembered, and it was only by a severe struggle that she was able to keep
the tears from welling into her eyes. She seemed bursting with happiness, and she
was remembering many things all the warm promise of life with Billy that had
been hers in the days before hard times. And now the promise was renewed again.
Since its fulfillment had not come to them, they were going away to fulfill it for
themselves and make the moving pictures come true.
Impelled by a half-feigned fear, she stole away into the kitchen bedroom where
Bert had died, to study her face in the bureau mirror. No, she decided; she was
little changed. She was still equipped for the battlefield of love. Beautiful she was
not. She knew that. But had not Mercedes said that the great women of history who
had won men had not been beautiful? And yet, Saxon insisted, as she gazed at her
reflection, she was anything but unlovely. She studied her wide gray eyes that were
so very gray, that were always alive with light and vivacities, where, in the surface
and depths, always swam thoughts unuttered, thoughts that sank down and
dissolved to give place to other thoughts. The brows were excellent she realized
that. Slenderly penciled, a little darker than her light brown hair, they just fitted her
irregular nose that was feminine but not weak, that if anything was piquant and that
picturesquely might be declared impudent.
She could see that her face was slightly thin, that the red of her lips was not quite
so red, and that she had lost some of her quick coloring. But all that would come
back again. Her mouth was not of the rosebud type she saw in the magazines. She
paid particular attention to it. A pleasant mouth it was, a mouth to be joyous with, a
mouth for laughter and to make laughter in others. She deliberately experimented
with it, smiled till the corners dented deeper. And she knew that when she smiled
her smile was provocative of smiles. She laughed with her eyes alone a trick of
hers. She threw back her head and laughed with eyes and mouth together, between
her spread lips showing the even rows of strong white teeth.
And she remembered Billy's praise of her teeth, the night at Germanic Hall after he
had told Charley Long he was standing on his foot. "Not big, and not little dinky

baby's teeth either," Billy had said, " . just right, and they fit you." Also, he had
said that to look at them made him hungry, and that they were good enough to eat.
She recollected all the compliments he had ever paid her. Beyond all treasures,
these were treasures to her the love phrases, praises, and admirations. He had said
her skin was cool soft as velvet, too, and smooth as silk. She rolled up her sleeve
to the shoulder, brushed her cheek with the white skin for a test, with deep scrutiny
examined the fineness of its texture. And he had told her that she was sweet; that
he hadn't known what it meant when they said a girl was sweet, not until he had
known her. And he had told her that her voice was cool, that it gave him the feeling
her hand did when it rested on his forehead. Her voice went all through him, he
had said, cool and fine, like a wind of coolness. And he had likened it to the first of
the sea breeze setting in the afternoon after a scorching hot morning. And, also,
when she talked low, that it was round and sweet, like the 'cello in the
Macdonough Theater orchestra.
He had called her his Tonic Kid. He had called her a thoroughbred, clean-cut and
spirited, all fine nerves and delicate and sensitive. He had liked the way she carried
her clothes. She carried them like a dream, had been his way of putting it. They
were part of her, just as much as the cool of her voice and skin and the scent of her
hair.
And her figure! She got upon a chair and tilted the mirror so that she could see
herself from hips to feet. She drew her skirt back and up. The slender ankle was
just as slender. The calf had lost none of its delicately mature swell. She studied
her hips, her waist, her bosom, her neck, the poise of her head, and sighed
contentedly. Billy must be right, and he had said that she was built like a French
woman, and that in the matter of lines and form she could give Annette Kellerman
cards and spades.
He had said so many things, now that she recalled them all at one time. Her lips!
The Sunday he proposed he had said: "I like to watch your lips talking. It's funny,
but every move they make looks like a tickly kiss." And afterward, that same day:
"You looked good to me from the first moment I spotted you." He had praised her

housekeeping. He had said he fed better, lived more comfortably, held up his end
with the fellows, and saved money. And she remembered that day when he had
crushed her in his arms and declared she was the greatest little bit of a woman that
had ever come down the pike.
She ran her eyes over all herself in the mirror again, gathered herself together into
a whole, compact and good to look upon delicious, she knew. Yes, she would do.
Magnificent as Billy was in his man way, in her own way she was a match for him.
Yes, she had done well by Billy. She deserved much all he could give her, the
best he could give her. But she made no blunder of egotism. Frankly valuing
herself, she as frankly valued him. When he was himself, his real self, not harassed
by trouble, not pinched by the trap, not maddened by drink, her man-boy and lover,
he was well worth all she gave him or could give him.
Saxon gave herself a farewell look. No. She was not dead, any more than was
Billy's love dead, than was her love dead. All that was needed was the proper soil,
and their love would grow and blossom. And they were turning their backs upon
Oakland to go and seek that proper soil.
"Oh, Billy!" she called through the partition, still standing on the chair, one hand
tipping the mirror forward and back, so that she was able to run her eyes from the
reflection of her ankles and calves to her face, warm with color and roguishly
alive.
"Yes?" she heard him answer.
"I'm loving myself," she called back.
"What's the game?" came his puzzled query. "What are you so stuck on yourself
for!"
"Because you love me," she answered. "I love every bit of me, Billy, because.
because. well, because you love every bit of me."